Funny in ret­ro­spect

Some in­ter­views are just an outand-out disas­ter, but you do have to laugh – if only when it’s all over.

“I once had to en­dure a three-hour in­ter­view which took place in a room with no win­dows and 20 other peo­ple. We were asked to climb over one an­other, talk at length about our fel­low in­ter­vie­wees, sing a song in front of the en­tire group and build a tower us­ing only straws and mask­ing tape.” – Ella, 31

“When I was 17, I went for an in­ter­view as a hospi­tal cleaner. It was a con­fus­ing place, so I went to the first re­cep­tion desk I could find. I was told to wait for ages. Then, bizarrely, I was given a kid­ney dish and asked to go and pee in it. I was so ner­vous about the in­ter­view that I couldn’t pee. I came out and asked when I might be seen for my in­ter­view. The re­cep­tion lady and var­i­ous nurses con­vulsed with laugh­ter. Wrong de­part­ment.” – Fiona, 33

“I was handed a feather dur­ing an in­ter­view for a job at a mu­seum and asked to give a three-minute pre­sen­ta­tion about it. I started waf­fling on about how the feather prob­a­bly came from a dodo and made up this whole his­tory of the dodo. I got the job, though, so who knows what the other can­di­dates did.” – Emily, 28

“I was asked, ‘What’s the big­gest an­i­mal you could beat in a fight, and why?’ Un­der pres­sure, I said a dol­phin, ‘So I could make friends with it and then put my thumb in the blow­hole.’ I have no idea why. I was des­per­ate.” – Holly, 29

“I was asked what I would say to an alien if it landed on Earth. I got flus­tered and said in an alien voice, ‘Zarg.’ They didn’t find it funny.” – Nancy, 28

“At the end of one in­ter­view, I got my foot tan­gled in the power ca­ble of the in­ter­viewer’s ex­pen­sive de­signer lamp and sent it crash­ing to the floor, where part of it broke off. In an­other, I spent an hour-long in­ter­view seated with my legs crossed. As the in­ter­view fin­ished, I started to stand up, only to dis­cover that one of my legs had gone com­pletely dead. I started to fall over, grabbed the desk and started talk­ing non­sense to my fu­ture boss un­til the feel­ing came back.” – An­drea, 35

“When I was 16, I ap­plied for a hol­i­day job at a su­per­mar­ket. The greasy as­sis­tant man­ager said, ‘Girls are meant to be good at mul­ti­task­ing. Which means do­ing more than one thing at once. Can you give me an ex­am­ple of mul­ti­task­ing?’ I opened my mouth to an­swer and promptly sneezed and farted very loudly at the same time. I didn’t get the job. I sus­pect he thought my ‘mul­ti­fart­ing’ was de­lib­er­ate.” – Janie, 32

“I walked into a cup­board at the end of the in­ter­view, think­ing it was the way out. I even shut the door be­hind me be­fore I re­alised.” – Su­san, 28